The Preventive Medicine and Occupational Health Service of the Dénia Health Department -DSD- has been reinforced during the COVID-19 pandemic to guarantee permanent care for hospital professionals and health centers in the Marina Alta.
In this sense, the Manager of the DSD, Luis Carretero, has highlighted the effort and commitment of the professionals, who have adapted with extreme rigor to the dizzying organizational changes and action protocols, forming new teams, sometimes even carrying out extraordinary tasks.
Currently, there is a large team of professionals made up of doctors, nurses, occupational risk prevention technicians and administrative staff dedicated to the prevention, identification, diagnosis and monitoring of all employees with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 infection. The objective is to guarantee care 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Among the tasks of this group, specially trained to deal with the coronavirus among DSD professionals, is prevention, through training, and constant revision of protocols, diagnostic tests or exhaustive monitoring of the clinic that professionals may present in quarantine or home isolation.
For Antonio Valdivia, Head of Preventive Medicine of the -DSD-, “the review and adaptation to our environment of the protocols issued by both the Ministry and the Ministry of Health, is being constant. We are updated and published daily on our intranet all the changes that occur. In addition, the training of all our colleagues has been carried out, both in person and online, and has been reinforced with posters and explanatory videos ”.
For her part, Teresa Prats, Preventive Medicine Nursing Supervisor, highlights the responsibility and collaboration of professionals. “We are monitoring every 48 hours for those colleagues in quarantine or home isolation. We also serve all socio-health professionals and the State security forces and bodies in the Marina Alta. In addition, the nursing team is in charge of taking the sample for coronavirus detection, either by PCR, where the viral load is analyzed through a nasopharyngeal or oropharyngeal exudate, or by digitopuncture to determine immunoglobulins (IgG e IgM).
According to Dr. Valdivia, professionals are followed up every two days to check the evolution of symptoms and inform them of the results of the tests. Based on these two variables, decisions are made, according to the protocols established by the official monitoring guides, issued by the Ministry and the Ministry of Health. When in doubt, adds the Chief of Preventive Medicine, we always choose the most protective option for our colleagues.
